A school change request is the process that parents follow in order to have their child attend a different school. Generally speaking, a school change request is made in the spring, and in anticipation of a move that will be effective for the subsequent September. However, it can also be used to request a change of schools in the current school year.

Starting on 8:00 AM on Monday, January 25th 2016, families can request school changes on-line.

In the past, school changes have been submitted on paper at the school the student is expected to attend at the time when the family hopes the request will take effect. Basically:

Elementary students changing to a different elementary school file at their current elementary school

Elementary students transitioning to a middle school (but wishing to change) file at the middle school where they would normally be expected to attend (based on their current elementary school)

Middle school students transitioning to secondary school (but wishing to change) file at the secondary school where they would normally be expected to attend (based on their current middle school)

In order to submit a School Change Request online, families can visit either:

Please note that the above links are not active until 8:00 AM on Monday, January 25th, 2016

Once the requested information is entered into the system, and the form is submitted, automatic notifications are sent to the family, the current school and the requested school. School changes will then be reviewed by the requested school’s administration. Once a request is processed, the family, and the home school will receive a notification by email updating them on the request’s status.

A family wishing to request a school change on paper can still visit their current school (or next year’s home school if the student is moving into either middle or secondary school). They will be given a form which they can complete on site and return to the office staff. It is important to note that all forms received on paper will be entered into the same on-line system used for the other requests.

We are currently finalizing the details and timelines for Academy Registration for 2016. Once the new information is available, we will be sure to post an update to this blog. In the meantime, if you have questions, Wayne Kelly (our district’s vice-principal for academies) can be contacted directly. Please feel free to email your questions to wkelly@sd62.bc.ca.

Our school district has prepared an FAQ document to address parent questions related to online registration. If you have questions regarding the system, we encourage you to download and review this document.

In late January of 2015, the Sooke School District began implementing on-line registration for Kindergarten students. Before year’s end, the system was expanded to allow for registration in students for Grades K through 5. We are pleased to announce that our electronic registration system will expand further. Starting on Monday, January 25th, prospective students can register for any regular K to 12 school in our district. The system will also allow for registration in special programs (such as French Immersion and Nature Kindergarten). For specific details, parents are encouraged to contact their home catchment schools.

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On January 26th, 2015, the Sooke School District brought in a new registration system that allowed parents to register their children for Kindergarten from home. In the first day of operation, the program allowed for the registration of 644 Kindergarten students throughout the district. This number continues to grow as more and more families use this convenient way of registering their children for a new school in September.

We are pleased to announce that effective Tuesday, February 10th 2015, the on-line system will expand to allow for the registration of students in Grades One through Five. In order to be registered with this system, a student must be:

A new student to the school district (meaning they are not currently registered and attending any school in the Sooke School District).

Registering to attend an elementary school (meaning Kindergarten through Grade Five).

Registering for the 2015/2016 school year (meaning they will start at a school in our district in September of 2015).

Students registering to attend in the current (2014/2015) school year must still register in-person at their catchment school.

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The following information is being posted on behalf of our school district’s academies coordinator to our registration blog for the benefit of families who are considering registering students for any of the Sooke School District’s academy programs for September, 2015. For further information on a specific academy, please contact the school were that academy is offered.

In addition the link can also be found on the Sooke School Districts Home Page: www.sd62.bc.ca

Spencer Hockey Academy 6,7 & 8 classes will be limited to 30 spaces per class for the 2015-16 school year and we will have a deadline of February 13th for students to sign up. Dunsmuir Soccer 6,7&8 will be limited to 30 spaces per class. If numbers permit another class of 30 could open. Dunsmuir Dance 6,7&8 will be limited to 24 spaces per class due to a seismic upgrade at the school. Deadline for registration in the Dunsmuir Academy programs is February 6th

Once the online application is complete a payment of $85 is needed to finalize your application and reserve your spot in the academy program. This payment can only be made at the School Board Office at 3143 Jacklin Road. The main office counter will be ready to accept your $85 payment by cheque ( made out to SD 62 ) , debit , credit card or cash. Receipts will be issued at the time of payment.

Since many of the academies use a written essay portion to determine final acceptance you may want to preview the current application which may be available on the school’s website (where the academy is being offered) to give your son or daughter an idea as to the question they will required to answer. If the applications are not on the individual school websites you may want to contact the schools directly to ask about the questions.

Out of Catchment Students:

Please follow that same registration procedure as above to reserve your space in the academy.

In addition you will need to contact your home school principal and fill out a school transfer request from available at the school

We’d like to start off by thanking the members of our school community for their enthusiastic response to our call for registrations. As many readers of our blog are aware, today was the first day in the history of our school district, that registrations for Kindergarten were being processed online. In an earlier post today we explained that there were some challenges associated with the system soon after 8:00. These were caused by our system having to process more on-line requests than we had originally planned for. By 8:45 AM, things were back on track, and those families who experienced early delays in their registration experiences started receiving their email confirmations quickly. After the initial rush, the system continued to function smoothly throughout the day. By the time this blog posting was put together, we are pleased to report that the system now holds 644 registrations, with well over 90% of them having been received on-line.

The registration system will continue to remain open from now on for those families who will continue to register throughout the week and beyond.

At 8:00 this morning, the Sooke School District’s new on-line registration system went live. Our initial planning was that up to 300 registrations would be requested at any one time. As it turns out, by 8:27 this morning, we had received 355 registrations. We’d like to thank our community for its patience as we ensured that our system could meet the demand.

As some parents have learned, there was a delay in receiving emails from the system. In some cases, this problem was encountered when families were trying to confirm emails prior to registration. In others, there was a delay in receiving confirmation emails once the registrations were submitted. We have since found the source of the delay, and have eliminated it. Families using the system should experience little delay in receiving any confirmation emails from this point forward.

It is important to note that the registration time attached to an application is based on when a family first started entering their registration information. For example, if someone began registering at 8:03 AM but did not receive a confirmation email until 8:43 AM, the official time attached to the application will be 8:03 AM.

We’d like to thank our community for their understanding and patience as we moved to this new registration system. In fact, in the time it took to compose this blog posting, the total number of registrations in the system has since grown to 436!

Yesterday evening, we received a question from a parent via our Facebook page. Specifically, we were asked how to request a change of schools. Here’s the process:

Except for the Nature Kindergarten and the French Immersion programs, all students must first register in their neighbourhood’s home school. In the cases of Nature Kindergarten and French Immersion, the application is made directly to those programs. However, in the event that a space isn’t available in those programs, the registration automatically reverts back to the neighbourhood home school. Our on-line registration system takes care of that for families automatically.

A parent or guardian can make a school change request. Basically, this is a request to have your child attend a school that is not your neighbourhood’s home school. There are a variety of reasons why these requests are made. School change requests must be filed at the student’s neighbourhood home school. This must be done in person as we haven’t automated these requests yet. The forms are available at your neighbourhood’s home school.

The neighbourhood home school will put the request on file. This allows the school you’ve requested to see that a form has been submitted.

Later in the spring, if a request can be granted, the requested school will contact the family and advise them that the request has been granted. These requests are always subject to availability of space in the school. All schools are required to ensure that there is enough space in them to accommodate children from the local neighbourhood first. It’s only if there is additional space that a request might be granted. Also, if space is limited, a school may not be able to definitively say whether a request is granted until as late as mid-September. If you haven’t heard from the requested school by the end of June, you can always contact your neighbourhood home school to check on the status of your request.

Unfulfilled school change requests remain active until December 31st of the school year for which they are requested. For example, if a family requests a school change today (January 26th, 2015) for the 2015/2016 school year, and it hasn’t been granted by December 31st, 2015, the request will be archived at that time. If the family wishes to make a new request for the following school year (in this case for the 2016/2017 year), they will have to refile in January 2016.

We hope this answers parents’ and guardians’ questions about school change requests.

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Over the past few days, we’ve had a number of questions regarding our on-line registration system’s handling of date-stamps. A ‘date-stamp’ is the time and date that is recorded as the ‘official’ time your request to register is sent to a school. We are confirming that the registration requests are date-stamped from the moment a parent or guardian opens the form and begins to type in an email address. From that moment, the system allows for two hours for the form to be completed (we estimate the total time needed to register a single student is anywhere from 15 to 20 minutes). If the form is completed within that two hour window, the official time of the registration request is from the moment you STARTED entering your information, and not when you clicked the ‘submit’ button at the end.

We hope you find this information helpful, and thanks for following our blog!

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About our Blog

This blog is intended to support parents and guardians as they register their children to begin attending one of our fine schools or programs of choice in the Sooke School District. Originally set up to introduce parents and guardians to our district's on-line registration system, this blog is maintained by Graham Arts, the District Principal for Information Technology.